Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth,
This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
To bask i’ the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet
For the ripple to run over in its mirth;
Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.
That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;
Such...
No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,—
The ship was as still as she could be;
Her sails from heaven received no motion;
Her keel was steady in the ocean.
Without either sign or sound of their shock,
The waves flowed over the Inchcape rock;
So little they rose, so little they fell,
They did not move the Inchcape bell.
The...
“ho, sailor of the sea!
How ’s my boy—my boy?”
“What ’s your boy’s name, good wife,
And in what ship sailed he?”
“My boy John—
He that went to sea—
What care I for the ship, sailor?
My boy ’s my boy to me.
“You come back from sea,
And not know my John?
I might as well have asked some landsman,
Yonder...
One night came on a hurricane,
The sea was mountains rolling,
When Barney Buntline turned his quid,
And said to Billy Bowling:
“A strong nor’wester ’s blowing, Bill;
Hark! don’t ye hear it roar now?
Lord help ’em, how I pities them
Unhappy folks on shore now!
“Foolhardy chaps who live in towns,
What danger they...
Go, patter to lubbers and swabs, do ye see,
’Bout danger, and fear, and the like;
A tight-water boat and good sea-room give me,
And it a’n’t to a little I ’ll strike.
Though the tempest topgallant-masts smack smooth should smite,
And shiver each splinter of wood,—
Clear the deck, stow the yards, and bouse everything tight,
And...
In slumbers of midnight the sailor-boy lay;
His hammock swung loose at the sport of the wind;
But watch-worn and weary, his cares flew away,
And visions of happiness danced o’er his mind.
He dreamt of his home, of his dear native bowers,
And pleasures that waited on life’s merry morn,
While Memory stood sideways, half covered with flowers...
Consider the sea’s listless chime:
Time’s self it is, made audible—
The murmur of the earth’s own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea’s end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.
No quiet, which is death’s—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,...
“My visual orbs are purged from film, and, lo!
Instead of Anster’s turnip-bearing vales,
I see old fairy land’s miraculous show!
Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales,
Her ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze,
And fairies, swarming———”
—Tennant’s “Anster Fair”
’T IS the middle watch of a summer’s night,—...
Oh! where do fairies hide their heads,
When snow lies on the hills,
When frost has spoiled their mossy beds,
And crystallized their rills?
Beneath the moon they cannot trip
In circles o’er the plain;
And draughts of dew they cannot sip,
Till green leaves come again.
Perhaps, in small, blue diving-bells
They...
From “The Tempest,” Act I. Sc. 2.
I.
COME unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands;
Court’sied when you have, and kissed.
(The wild waves whist!)
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
Hark, hark!
Burthen [dispersedly]—Bow-wow.
The watch-dogs bark—
Burthen...
